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Q: My daughter and I stopped trying to shop for Obamacare health insurance on the government website after two hours of computer crashes and frozen screens. Is there a way to meet face-to-face with someone who can help me shop for a health plan and tell me if I’m eligible for premium subsidies?

A: There’s a simple answer to your question. And then there’s the painful truth.

As President Obama said on Monday from the Rose Garden, the simple answer is to call the Obamacare helpline at 800-318-2596 any time day or night.

“We are redoubling our efforts to make sure you can buy the same quality health insurance the old-fashioned way, either over the phone or in person,” the President said. “The call centers are up and running.”

A call center staffer should be able to help you apply for coverage and subsidies, as well as give you the phone number of a community organization closest to your zip code that is ready to help you face-to-face to pick a health plan on your state’s Obamacare insurance exchange. If you run into trouble at healthcare.gov, the old-fashioned way can work beautifully—but only sometimes.

The painful truth is that the call center—despite 10,000 staffers under a $300 million contract—is currently amateurish. It needs to be fixed fast, along with healthcare.gov. Depending on the state you live in, you may have a very frustrating time actually connecting with anyone who can help you buy complicated health insurance and get whatever federal subsidies you may be eligible to collect.

I say that based on my experience trying to help friends shop for Obamacare coverage in New York and New Jersey, plus interviews with experts and staff at the Department of Health and Human Services.

My New York experience went as smoothly as the president could wish. A call center helper directed me to three local community organizations. I phoned one, and two days later a staffer called back with an appointment for my friend near where she lives in Brooklyn. No fuss, no muss.

But New Jersey—one of 36 states where the federal government is operating the online exchange, rather than the state government, like New York—was a mess. When I phoned the call center on Wednesday, the helper referred me to a rebate card outfit with an arm-long list of scam warnings on the Internet.

Here’s what happened. My friend in Hackensack wanted to meet face-to-face with one of the government’s trained non-profit advisers, either a “counselor” who could help her apply or a “navigator” who could tell her what she’d pay after subsidies and actually enroll her. But the call center staffer I reached—who was obviously reading from scripts—drew a blank for helpers in my friend’s zip code. After a few tries at an adjacent zip code, he gave me an 888 phone number.

He didn’t know the name of the organization he referred me to, but he assured me that people there had “comprehensive training,” and could provide the “navigator assistance” my friend wanted.

Instead, the 888 number connected me to a Utah company selling $100 rebate cards to big-box stores. Joelene tried very hard to get my credit card number before she would “point me in the right direction” about finding health insurance. I refused. Then Crystal tried to get my card number before finally admitting that the company had nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.

I phoned the call center again. This time, after initially drawing a blank, a helper told me I could find a “certified counselor,” rather than a “navigator,” at Team Management 2000 in Hackensack. She wasn’t certain about the differences between a counselor and a navigator, but she was sure someone at Team Management could help me.

If only that were true. When I called there, a staffer said her CEO is “not participating in Obamacare because she couldn’t get answers to get up and running.”

The staffer referred me to the North Hudson Community Action Corporation; she was pretty sure I could find help there. Perhaps I can, but I couldn’t get through to anyone to find out. North Hudson’s phone service kept looping back to its greeting message. Press 1 to talk to someone got me back to press 1 to talk to someone. And the nhcap.org website was down.

At this point, I reached out to people at HHS and other Obamacare supporters for advice.

Unfortunately I got conflicting advice. Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, said it might be best to wait until around Thanksgiving. He said the problems should be cleared up by then, and he added: “The family’s health care is a great thing to discuss around the Thanksgiving table.” I think he was joking.

A spokesman at HHS suggested instead that I get help immediately at localhelp.healthcare.gov. When you enter your zip code at that site, you should get a list of local community organizations ready to give you guidance.

Localhelp got me a step closer to arranging an appointment for my friend in Hackensack, but it was far from ideal. The website provided a list of 140 outfits offering Obamacare “application assistance” near her home. However, no one at the first group I phoned—the Hyacinth Foundation of Jersey City—has yet completed the five-hour training required to become a “certified counselor.” A friendly staffer there told me to call back in a week or so. “We’re working out the kinks,” she said, “lots of kinks.”

Two other organizations I called last week have yet to call back.

Also, for some reason, localhelp’s 140 “assistance” organizations did not include the five New Jersey community organizations that accepted $2 million in federal aid in August to become navigators. It’s reasonable to think navigators should be enrolling applicants by now—and also should be listed at localhelp.healthcare.gov.

In yet another frustrating experience, a friend who couldn’t log in at healthcare.gov last week applied for her family of five through the call center and got left with more questions than answers.

Her youthful-sounding helper said it was his first day. He also thought her Social Security number was “cool.” But at the end of the 45-minute session, and after checking with supervisors, all he could say was that someone would either call or email with more information about actually enrolling in a health plan between now and January 1. December 15 is the last day to enroll to get health insurance coverage beginning January 1. Now, she’s worried her family may not get coverage for the entire year.

“The whole experience was amateur hour,” my friend said.

In general, the online exchanges run by the states with the help of federal planning money, like the New York exchange, have been performing better than those operated by HHS. In New Jersey, for example, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill this summer to create a state exchange with more than $15 million in federal aid —a move the Newark Star Ledger said damaged the state and showed an “indifference to the hardships of low-income families.”

I believe in Obamacare. I agree with the many experts who say these start-up problems—like those that plagued Medicare Part D under President Bush—will get solved eventually, and millions of working- and middle-class people will get affordable health coverage next year, many for the first time in their lives.

“No one is madder than me about the website not working as well as it should,” the President said on Monday. “Which means, it’s going to get fixed.”

But I also agree with President Obama’s former press secretary Robert Gibbs, who said on MSNBC last week: “When they get this fixed, I hope they fire some people who were in charge of making sure this thing was supposed to work.”